PESCO: Possible implications in the field of migration

In November 2017 the EU Member States agreed on creation of the Permanent Structured Cooperation on security and defence (PESCO). They published a list of projects, including many security areas and Benedetta in her new blog tries to understand their possible effect on the migration.

PESCO is a specific CSDP (Common Security and Defence Policy) flexibility mechanism introduced by the Treaty of Lisbon with the aim of allowing Member States to voluntary join a binding commitment in the cooperation in the area of defence and security.

The cooperation is expected to ensure more protection to European citizens and to increase the efficiency of Member states on defence by combing security and defence resources and knowledges. The participants to PESCO have identified a preliminary list of 17 projects, which are most likely to be accepted at the beginning of 2018. Almost all Member States are participating in PESCO except for the United Kingdom, Denmark and Malta.

 PESCO is still at an early phase and not much has been done yet. Thus, it will be important to monitor the implementation of these 17 projects in 2018 and see the outcome of the cooperation at the beginning of 2019 to start understanding how this Permanent Structure will work and will enhance the efficiency of defence and security in relation to migration.

The whole article is available here.